Boxes

The most important boxes have been moved: the ones with the books in them.
(I have more books, but they’re at my mom’s house, because I hadn’t yet found room for them at my previous apartment.)

I love my books. I’ve read some of them more than 5 times (yes, I’m that sort of person).
And now I’ve taken the books and put them away. They look very cramped. Shakespeare’s Othello is next to Terry Pratchett’s The Fifth Elephant; Edward Said’s Orientalism is next to Santa vs. Satan by Jake Kalish; and of course, Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City (which is very different from the TV series) is packed next to Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair. Agreed, I’m missing some of the great works of literature in my collection, but I do have a Tolstoy and a Dostoyevsky in there too. As well as some non-fiction works on linguistics, dictionaries, and grammar books. I have three collections of poems by my friend Scott Hightower. Some contemporary Latino poetry. But most of it is fantasy literature. Anyway. I like how when I look at them it’s like a weird cross-section through my likes and dis-likes.

I’ve started unpacking some of the other boxes and one of the first things I did was re-evaluate whether I wanted some of the stuff I’d packed. More stuff got thrown away. Hurrah! But now clothes and photo albums are strewn on the living-room floor and it’s not cozy anymore but just messy so I need to tidy up urgently.